I supposed this would be a ‘best of’ for THE ORCHESTRA OF MIRRORED REFLECTIONS, an ensemble with a fairly convoluted history by internet standards, something about India, by way of Ukraine. It’s certainly got the same dark, gray vibe that rides through the Eastern European post-punk. Again though, dark jazz, doom jazz, jazz noir, future jazz… whatever jazz… man! It works for me.

Another beach conversation from over the weekend, to be explored further at another time, about happiness. It’s one thing for me to sit and type some of these thoughts out, but they sound quite different spoken. That could very well have to do with the faces of the people hearing it. What I said was, “I find myself much happier on a regular basis when I don’t begin each day with the expressed and implicit goal that I’m going to be happy. I think striving for happiness left me nothing but unhappy.”

The reaction, and this is from someone who knows me as well as anyone in the world, was initially thoughtful and then concerned.

And this is why I have fewer and fewer conversations about myself, and I’ve gone back to answering the how you doing question with, “I’m fine.” It’s not a dishonest answer. I am perfectly fine and have never been less unhappy. Qhite the opposite, I am generally happy and content. That’s largely because very little effort expended in pursuit of happiness as a goal. I have other pursuits that may or may not satisfy me on a given day, though they usually do. Very little thought is put into being happy or unhappy, but then when if I should stop and think about it, I’m generally pretty fucking happy.

Consider that a life hack.

Living my best life out here…